


Windows

by in_a_different_box_to_you



Series: A Very Persistent Illusion [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Art, Asexual Relationship, M/M, Students, Unilock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-18 21:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3585213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_a_different_box_to_you/pseuds/in_a_different_box_to_you
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor has lost hope of every meeting Sherlock again. As an art student, he excels, yet his acceptance of loneliness may simply be an illusion...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I've improved, I must have improved...  
> So yeah, Victor is basically who I wish I was.
> 
> Title - Albert Einstein - 'Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

 

My name is Victor Trevor and I will change the world. I am not actually an egomaniac, but, for all I know, everyone around me is simply the product of my deranged imagination, so why should I not embrace my capabilities? Maybe I will write a novel that will find a solution to the question of life, the universe, and everything, and cure depression for ever, or maybe I will convert the whole world to veganism, or maybe I will depict the existential crisis of adolescence in a painting. 

 

When I was sixteen I fell in love. It helped the numbness for a while, but then the whole fucking alternate universe he created - he tore it apart. 

 

I didn’t think that I’d start writing again. All the coloured words in my head are grey on paper, in the real world. It all sounds ridiculous, as oppose to infinitely beautiful and infused with genius as it exists inside my consciousness. I think that that was what he did: provide an escape into his brightly coloured, genius, beautiful mind. In the end, it was like the moment in epilogues of children's books like _Peter Pan_ , _Narnia_ or _Mary Poppins_ , when the kids grow up and the world spits them back into purgatory. 

 

I like it up here. I like how many clever people people there are everywhere - people who actually think. I love the history and the stories, everywhere. The theme in my work is currently flight and freedom, but mostly, because it is more accessible, I focus on the opposite. Its alright to see meaning in everything here. People are intelligent enough, or lost enough, to acknowledge that if there is no meaning then there is no point. 

 

But mostly I’m just alone. I’m the guy that everyone likes, but is on a different plane to the rest. When my family visit they treat me like an elderly relative and, to be honest, its better than being spoken too like an adolescent. I’m not lonely, I just miss him. I feel like relic of an exploded citadel: The last Time Lord. 

 

I wonder the streets at dusk, looking for randomers to paint. The moment of connection I feel as I depict a homeless man in oil is beautiful, so similar to when we - 

 

I think this is why I’ve begun to write again. Maybe this is the solution to the emptiness, to fill the sky with words. 

 

The old mans face is shredded with silver stubble, full of holes from all the times he has broken apart. Painting it is like leaping from rock to rock across a river. The flood keeps coming, his wrinkles twisting as his story becomes part of mine. Its like building a map, a record of humanity, bringing these people into my studio and listening, adding their faces to the graffitied wall. 

 

Once there was a child, she spent every night crying and everyday she coldly regarded everyone around her, laughing mechanically. I don’t know how they heard about me, but her parents brought her to the flat in the late afternoon last summer. I sketched her emotionless face with thousands of marks and then, as grey leaked across the heavens, I directed her mother and father into my small kitchen for tea. When I returned her eyes were red, her cheeks trickled with tears, impassive. I painted that moment, called it ‘The Imprisoned Child.’ 

 

“Maybe there is someone out there. Someone who will understand exactly how you want them to.”

 

“Like a _soulmate._ ” She snorted. 

 

“No. Like a real person.”

 

She looked down at her feet and the light faded. As the family fell back into the street, the darkness made them just a different shade of black to the air. The lamps around them glowed, not warm enough, not bright enough. A cold westerly twisted around their isolated figures, islands, each one. 

 

Every night their eyes follow me under my duvet, like windows into a thousand more stories. Double glazed windows, bolted and sometimes blocked by remembered bars. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter but stupidly didn't save it and then clicked 'don't save', because I am inept. Having explored a thousand different ways to recover it, it was permanently lost. I feel like I have lost part of Victor now. I rewrote it with an almost completely different plot, so I apologise for any errors. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy...

There are three things I love most in this world. The first is obvious, the second is my flat - a loft conversion with exposed brick walls, coated in graffiti now obscured by my canvasses - and the third is the huge black Alsatian I inherited. Bean’s owner collapsed while I painted her. She is now in hospital with a terminal illness.I adopted the dog and we have been together for about a year. She is going some way to help me forget Redbeard, but she wages an eternal was with my charger cables. I have taken to sitting in coffee shops with my phone and laptop, where a table divides Bean and the plug socket. 

 

I suppose it was inevitable, that one day I would see him across a room and then he would be everywhere. The figure flickered behind the crowd and my own reflection in the glass, curly black hair wild in the wind. I stared at this man who was not _him._ Slim build in fitted suit - loads of people have that build and _everyone_ wears suits. He stood in front of a shop - ‘Arthur Beale’ - scanning the seamen paraphernalia in the window display. I smiled slightly at the memory of _his_ childhood dream. As I watched, the man disappeared into a group of tourists. 

 

I turned at the sound of Bean barking. She was bothering a neighbouring table. “I’m so sorry. Bean. BEAN.” 

 

A disapproving face met mine. “I am surprised they let dogs in here.” The man said to his wife, completely blanking me. “I would have thought it would discourage custom, what with allergies and everything.”

 

The woman’s features crumpled with rage. She stood, stuffing her phone from the table into her pocket, growled, “Well that just takes the biscuit.” and, much to my bemusement, marched from the room. 

 

The man groaned, and with an affected sigh of the long suffering, ambled out after her. 

 

 

*

 

 

They say that one’s school years are the best in one’s life. This is an in absurd notion. Besides hormones, there’s peer pressure, bullying, exams, stress, life changing decisions and existential crises. I never really got into the whole social scene in secondary school, which is why I am so apprehensive about tonight.

 

Yes, Victor Trevor is attending his first party ever this evening. I am not sure how this happened, but I was applying the ‘going-with-the-flow’ method during a conversation. This experiment will just have to be extended for the rest of the day. The venue is the house of someone called ‘Gnasha.’ I am hoping that this is a misnomer, but there are some… eccentrics on my art course. 

 

*

 

I arrived in a taxi at 42 Belford Street. I had expected somewhere in a council estate, not a town house. The door was open but I rang the doorbell anyway. Someone yelled “come up” from upstairs, so I scuffed my feet on the mat and ascended the wide staircase, Bean at my heels. Music and voices came from a room at the end of the landing, and I approached quietly, pushing the door gently open. Several boys and a few girls had perched on the furniture. 

 

“Victor, hey” Mark looked up from where he was analysing ‘Gnasha’’s CD collection. 

 

“Um, hi.”

 

“This is Gnasha.” He gestured to a weirdly proportioned boy/man spread out on the bed. A jolt of recognition startled me as our eyes met. “Gnasha, this is Victor, an art mate.” 

 

“We’ve met.” Mycroft Holmes said smoothly, eyes fixed on mine, occasionally glancing at Bean distainfully. “I think you should leave.” He was like a door, but he was closed.

 

I glanced behind me, through the agar door to the rest of the house. “Is he, is Sher-?”

 

“Leave now, Victor Trevor.”

 

I felt my pulse beat faster in a kind of irrational hope that sparked an old panic. “Does he? Has he- does he remember?”

 

Mycroft contemplated me cooly. “Sherlock has no knowledge of your existence.” 

 

I clasped the door frame and my head began to ache with disfunctioning tears. At that moment I felt someone storm past me into the room. “Mycroft, _please_ turn that intolerable excuse for music down, it is interfering with the birds.” I stared at _him._ So close, almost touching me. I could feel the heat from his billowing dressing gown. Yet so far away. More than two fucking years alone. Without your world. I felt my body stiffen so that I could not have reached out, even if I had wanted to. _He does not know me he does not know me he does not me God God, just turn around and say something_ Sherlock, _sherlock just fucking please just._

 

Mycroft was frozen for a moment, eyes flickering between me and his brother, before recovering. “Then, brother dear, I suggest you move your _birds_ elsewhere. Do not forget whose house this is.”

 

“How could I? When I have such a DISTINGUISHED HOST.” He snarled and marched from the room. _Breath, breath. Come back!_

 

“Do forgive my brother’s antics,” Mycroft addressed the room, “He was not properly socialised as a child.” There was a chorus of chuckles. He lay back, restarting an anecdote, full attention on him. “Now, where were we?”

 

I stared at the back of his head, then slunk away. As I reached the bottom of the stairs Mycroft shouted after me, "I'd advise you not to get too attached, but I can see by your middle finger, that's not going to happen." I threw myself back into the street and hailed a taxi. 

 

The tears started as rain began to patter the windows. I thumped my head against the glass, the sweet pain of it thrumming into my brain, like aftershocks. The coldness of it made me shiver and when I’d started, I couldn’t stop. Bean howled mournfully and pressed her head into my lap. The cabbie leaned over so that he could see me in the mirror and asked gruffly, “You okay, son?”

 

“Yes.” I sniffed, “Yes, I’ll be alright.” 

 

“There will be good days, son.” He smiled slightly, eyes twinkling, and murmured again, “Yes, there will be good days.”

 

I looked out at the flickering grey of passing cars and the splatter of the puddles and the isolated people marching down the streets and seriously doubted it. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

I’ve been writing about someone else’s life. For some reason the alternate, romanticised universe I inhabit when I write fiction seems far more genuine than my everyday experiences. He’s called Benoit and he is perfect. Maybe too perfect. 

 

 

I don’t expect my writings would make particularly interesting reading. I don’t expect my reflections do either, but I hate to leave a melody unfinished. By comparison to fiction, though, my experiences seem incredibly discordant. 

 

This morning I met a very nice girl in a coffee shop. We drank chai and talked for hours about random things - _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ , Derren Brown, Yves Klein’s ‘Leap into the void’, Kazuo Ishiguro and The Scream. I have met few people who share my ‘devout’ existentialism. It was… sort of surreal, conversing with O, who picked up our philosophy from a childhood friend. We share the depressing belief that life is pointless: a belief which is ultimately liberating - if you are in a good mood. 

 

Despite the impression I might give, I’m not usually prone to spontaneously addressing strangers, but as I wondered into an interesting looking cafe after a tutorial, some papers balanced precariously on the narrow high table by the window next to a student, buried in a book, tipped onto the floor. Bean barked and charged towards them. I threw myself at her (Bean) to stop her savaging the girl’s work. I looked up at her as she sorted the mess from where I was crouched on the floor, an arm around bean’s middle. 

 

“Um,” Bean began to lick my bare forearm frantically. “Do you want a hand.”

 

She laughed. “I think you might have your hands full.”

 

Bean calmed down and trotted towards the student, sniffing around her feet. “Sorry, she’s a bit mental.”

 

“Hmm.” She agreed and resettled on her stool, gesturing to the papers, re-stacked under the massive weight of _Infinite Jest_. “That was probably the powers that be reminding me to revise.”

 

“Or physics reminding you of the existence of gravity.”

 

“You’re at the Ruskin, right?” At my confusion, she explained, “Only an art student could be that dismissive of the sanctity of revision. Or wear that scarf,” She added under her breath. 

 

I grinned then shrugged. “Why re-learn old information when you can discover more knowledge?”

 

“To get a degree so that you don’t die alone in a gutter?” 

 

“Psychology?”

 

“Correct.” 

 

“I like this scarf.”

 

“That says more about you than you might think.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Derren Brown fan?”

 

“Yes,” I snorted, “But I also had a friend who could tell my father’s career from one glance at my right hand. I didn’t even know it myself.”

 

“You didn’t know what your dad worked as?”

 

“It’s complicated.”

 

“Parents split up?”

 

I saw how I could have given her that impression and made no indication in the negative or affirmative direction, but bought some tea and sat down next to her. She began to analyse the dream I had last night - A dark figure running through a maze, chased by thousands of purple frogs. Apparently it is my subconscious telling me I am emotionally repressed and avoid confrontation. 

 

O came back to my flat and allowed me to do her portrait in return for teaching her how to dance. The former was reasonably successful, but the latter ended with us lying on the floor, shaking with laughter, Bean barking wildly. Gasping for breath, I staggered to my feet and pulled her up by one hand. 

 

“You were right.”

 

“Hmmm?”

 

“My toes are in agony.”

 

She snorted and collapsed onto the sofa. “Never become a teacher.”

 

“Don’t worry, I’m destined to die alone in a gutter. Lunch?”

 

“Yes please.” 

 

I bounded towards the door, flinging on my coat. “Besides, I don’t think I could allow my intellect to stoop to flooding the brains of hormonal teenagers with mediocre ability.”

 

“Really?” She laughed. “I am beginning to see the reclusive artist thing now.”

 

“Hey, I don’t go around psychoanalysing people I’ve just met.”

 

“I’m trying to break the habit.” 

 

We negotiated the stairway and emerged into the street. I turned to O, but my words died in my mouth. 

 

He was there, leaning morosely against the side of the bus shelter on the opposite pavement, eyes scanning the lunchtime crowd. Deducing, most likely. 

 

I vaguely heart O say, “You know, if you were slightly more normal, this would be considered a date.” I stopped still, ignoring the people swerving in front of me. “What? What is it? Victor.” Bean began barking at a spaniel across the road. 

 

“ _Sherlock!_ ” He turned, eyes meeting mine through the crowd. He looked up then down the street, and then pushed himself upright, ambling through a gap in the traffic. Out of the corner of my eye, I didn’t register Bean leaping onto the road, towards the other dog, who was yelping wildly and tugging on its leash. Blinking, I screamed as she stopped in the centre of the tarmac, the spaniel having been dragged away. There was no gap in the flow of people. “Sorry, excuse me. Excuse me.”

 

Sherlock looked around to see Bean, his eyes widening as a cab came hurtling towards them. He threw himself at her, dragging her off the road as the car hurtled past. She snarled and twisted in his grip, sinking her teeth into his leg. The crowd finally parted and I staggered towards them, yelling at Bean. 

 

“Jesus Christ, get your mental Hound of Death off me.” - Not great first words to hear from the love of your life. 

 

“Sorry, sorry. BEAN.” She released the tattered remains of Sherlock’s trouser leg and whined, leaping up and licking my chin. 

 

He looked up from the injury and into my face, his eyes narrowing. “You were at _Mycroft’s_.” 

 

He remembered. “Believe me, I am no friend of your brothers.”

 

“Oh, _I do_.” He smirked slightly. It was a new expression, but it suited him.

 

“Yeah. Thank you, you may have just saved my dog’s life.” 

 

“You’re not in the homeless network.”

 

“No. Look, your bleeding. I live -” I gestured behind me, “- just there. Your leg will get infected, you should clean it.”

 

“Mmm.” He was staring into my eyes, trying to remember. 

 

“Victor.” O tapped my shoulder and I looked round, startled. “Look, this was great. And I’ll see you again.” She stretched up and kissed me on the cheek, then walked away.

 

“O!” I called out, trying to stop Bean following her. She turned and waved, grinning, and then vanished into the crowd. 

 

“She thinks your gay.” Sherlock observed.

 

“Mmm.” I agreed, “They all do.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again. Yes, this is an update. Anything to avoid doing maths.

I dream sometimes, in amongst the frogs and labyrinths, that Sherlock is dead. Sometimes it’s just a random body in an alleyway that bares no resemblance to his living self but I know with growing certainty can be no one but Sherlock. Other times it’s barely even that, merely an idea or a funeral where the characters I met in those few days interact independently of reality’s narrative, grieving. After the end to a boring day, that is when I feel it. 

 

I walk through dream streets, the words, ‘that follow like tedious argument,’ echoing through them in someone else's voice, ‘of invidious intent, to lead you to…’ Then the thumping starts. At first it could just be my heartbeat, reminding me that I am alive, and that would be okay. But they get closer, sharper, and I know that he’s behind me and I know that if he reaches me, then maybe… ‘An overwhelming question…’ And I turn and there is no one there. So I run back, and the town disappears and is replaced. I’m back in Edinburgh, running up Calton Hill in the dark, because I can hear breathing and it’s not mine and it’s just around this corner. Then I’m standing on the National Monument, and where the city should be, there’s darkness. I know that, on the other side of the pillar, it is Sherlock breathing heavily. There’s no way round. I reach along the stone, stretching my fingers towards the noise and another hand grabs mine. And as I cling to it, it is pulled away. I scrabble hands around the stone and the air behind and then stagger back. My hand is wet with blood. I look up and Sherlock is there, his skin a net with holes that is slowly breaking, lying in a pile of needles. And the voice, his voice tells me disdainfully, ‘Oh, do not ask ‘what is it?’ 

 

And when I wake, I have no way of knowing that it’s not true. 

 

“Trevor.”

 

 

 

“ _Victor Trevor_.” I realise I’m staring, blocking the doorway, and Sherlock is bleeding on the carpet. 

 

I stumble aside. “Sorry.” _I’m really not, you bastard._

 

Sherlock glances around and turns to look at me like I am an imbecile. “Bathroom?”

 

“Oh. Through there.” 

 

“Thank you.”

 

I want to tell him. Would he remember if I told him? I stand in the middle of my flat, listening to water running as Sherlock’s shadow shifts across the tiles visible past the ajar door. The tap squeaks closed and the sound of dripping echoes. He stills, then the light flickers across the floor and there is a quiet sloshing sound. 

 

“Who was he?” 

 

“What?”

 

“You lost someone. Male. Drug habit.” He pulls the plug and the water rumbles into the pipes, obliterating the peace. 

 

“No.”

 

Sherlock limps back into the room, one trouser leg rolled to his knee, and raises his eyebrows. “ _Yes.”_

 

“No, I mean, I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

“Dull.” He collapses onto the sofa. “Soo…”

“I’m really sorry about…” I trail off, gesturing in the general direction of bean, who is circling her bed, whining - as if she can sense my turmoil. 

 

“- Your gigantic hound from hell?”

 

“Yes.” _I love you._ Benoit would have just told him there and then and then he would have leant down and brushed one elegant hand through that _really great hair_ and… No he wouldn’t. Because Benoit’s _fictional._

 

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve always considered a leg injury might come in handy, criminals always underestimate people with limps. Police too, come to think of it. Although, maybe that’s justified, what with the inefficient running - so useful in escape or pursuit of suspects, constant distraction of the pain,” I wince, finally breaking eye contact, “and the fact that any intimidation one might attempt is undermined by the hobbling walk and one needing a chair whenever stationary.”

 

“You always were a drama queen.”

 

“My brother tell you that?”

 

“Something like that,” I mutter, sitting on the far end of the couch. I look down at the two half-cushions between us, the lines in the fabric that would connect. If it were not for the gaping crevasse dividing them, as massive and dramatic as the splits suddenly appearing in the earth in _Ice Age 4._ I can just see the end of a biro, slightly chewed, in the gap. I think of all the stuff I’ve dropped down there, unsure how this fits into the metaphor.

 

“I’ve always wondered why people wear them.” I start at Sherlock’s voice, still surprised that it is not in my head. 

 

“What?”  


“The rings.” He nods to my hand.

 

I contemplate the black band above my knuckle. “You never considered it?”

 

He stares at me. “How did you…?”

 

I smile slightly, wondering if he had ever asked that question quite like that before. It’s nice, I think, to be on the receiving end of ‘deducee confusion’ even if there was no deduction involved, this time. I wonder if this is what it would be like to travel backwards in time to meet historic figures who's lives have, in the future, been exposed. 

 

“I mean, of course I’ve heard of the ‘gaydar’ but frankly, the idea’s ridiculous. And it could possibly work when applied to a lack of sexuality… I need more data…” I’m amused, and slightly alarmed, by how far he is taking this. 

 

Then, quite suddenly, his eyes, frantically roaming around the room a second before, are pinned to mine. It seems as if there is a spider, tentatively beginning to spin a thread across the rift in time, knitting what I have lost, back to me. 

 

And then he looks away, almost flustered, running a hand through the chaos of his hair. The strand of spider silk snaps and drifts away, swaying with the dust in the sunlight for a moment before vanishing. I blink, watching the fading shadow of the sun on the silhouette of his profile. 

 

He stands and I flinch. “How’s the rent?”

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“Don’t be.” He grins, and it breaks the ice of his face and shatters my heart all over again. “Must be hard, paying for a place like this when you are so disinclined to sell your artwork.” I shrug. I can be nonchalant when the air is going stale in my trachea and the cells making it up may all be killing themselves to escape the pure _anticipation_ of this silence and let this breath escape. “I’m currently… house hunting.” He meets my eyes, like _he knows,_ and I think he does. “Yes. That was a hint.”

 

“Most people don’t invite themselves to live with - ” I grimace, “complete strangers.” He just smirks and offers me a hand. I take it, tentatively, murmuring too loudly, “but then you’re not most people, I suppose.” 

 

“No, Victor, I’m not.” He hasn’t let go of my hand. “I foresee this as the beginning of a mutually advantageous partnership.” And he’s so close and I can feel his breath on my skin and I have a feeling he’s going to kiss me so I turn away.


End file.
